Timothy Egan speaks Monday at the Crouse-Hinds Concert Theater of the John H. Mulroy Civic Center in Syracuse.Barry Wong

By Denise Headd Contributing writer

The Irish are famous for storytelling and Timothy Egan certainly knows that. My dad always told me that storytelling is one of the great hereditary traits of the Irish.” Born in Seattle, 1954 Egan comes from a family of seven children, “A big Irish Catholic family.”

Egan is a Pulitizer-Prize winning author, journalist and columnist. He has covered stories from the collapse of small- town America to the O.J. Simpson trial. He worked as a national correspondent for The New York Times, writes an online opinion column for The Times, and is the author of seven books. While he doesn’t consider himself a history buff, he enjoys writing about history and, more importantly, making a story come to life. “I try to bring texture to a story. I try to make you feel, see and smell.”He lives in Seattle with his wife, Joni, and their two daughters, Sophie and Casey. Egan is the second speaker in the 2012-2013 Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series season. He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the John H. Mulroy Civic Center. In researching your career, I read that your mother loved to read. Did that influence your career path at all? My mother was hugely influential in my life. She died this year of a massive brain tumor and I just dedicated my new book to her memory. She was the mother of seven kids. We were a big Irish-Catholic family. She always wanted to be an artist. She loved history and writing but she gave it all up to raise her kids. She was highly influential in making all of us (me in particular) love storytelling, reading and history — making stories come alive. There’s no such thing as boring history, just boringly told history and that’s one of the things I learned from her. She read three books a week right up until she died. Reading was her escape at the end of the day. She would read and go off to wherever the book took her. Libraries are so important to our communities. What role has the library played either in your life growing up or in the research you do for your books? My family wasn’t well off so we would go to the book mobile, which would come into our neighborhood in Spokane, Wash. The highlight of our week was to go and get every “Curious George” book we could find. Libraries woke up my mind initially when I was a kid. More importantly for me as a writer and an author, I’ve had some magical moments of research in certain libraries, whether the Library of Congress, a university library or a community library, where I came across some piece of magic, some treasure. A letter from someone, a diary, an original speech by a prominent person long forgotten, and reading these things have made me feel close to people from the past. The first time I read Teddy Roosevelt’s diaries I put on the white gloves and went to the National Archives. I was almost trembling. It was such a great moment. I wouldn’t have written any of the things I’ve written without the keeper of these memories, which are libraries. You were part of a team who won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series called “How Race is Lived in America.” Has winning the award changed your life — or your writing — in any measurable way? No, it really didn’t. It was a great and rewarding project because we went so deep. Our editor kept sending us back to go below the surface of the views of race. But winning it didn’t really change me. I have to be honest and say that winning the National Book Award did change me. (laughs) How so? I was really unprepared for it. It felt like the Oscar Award of books. I never thought I would get it. There was a very good group of well-known authors nominated for the award. When I won I was literally gasping for breath. Not a week goes by without someone mentioning it. It will probably follow me to my grave. I’d like to be remembered as the father of two, but people will probably remember the National Book Award. I saw you in an interview discussing your book “The Worst Hard Time” and the story of the great American Dust Bowl. In the interview you said, “Writing this book literally changed my life.” Yes, it made me look at history differently. There are so many great stories which are untold. Steinbeck told the story of the people who left, but the larger story was that most people didn’t leave. What was it like to stay behind at a time when the earth itself had turned on you? There were great stories of average people who don’t normally get written about so it changed my view of finding history and stories in the margins. That doesn’t mean you overlook the major players, but it means the minor players, who rarely get prominent billing in the drama, have a time to tell their stories as well. There is no substitute for sitting down with someone who has lived in an era and who looks you in the eye to tell you their story. This fall, PBS will run a documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns about the role the Dust Bowl played in American History. Can you talk about that documentary and the role you played? When I was working on that book, I looked at my kids’ high school “American History” book and there was one paragraph dedicated to the Dust Bowl. This was the worst environmental catastrophe during the worst economic time and it was largely forgotten. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how people have reacted to the book. It has the universal theme of resilience. Ken picked up on that. This piece of history that I was afraid wouldn’t find an audience has now found a huge audience. Americans do respond to history if it’s told well. I am the onscreen historian on the film. Ken is one of the best storytellers we have. In your book “The Big Burn,” you write extensively about the Great Fire of 1910 (in Montana, Idaho and Washington) and you describe the events as “human beings verses nature.” Can you elaborate? To understand the scope of this storm, and you’ve just had Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast, this is a firestorm that in less than two days destroyed an area the size of Connecticut. That is nature verses human beings. The people were mostly immigrants all helplessly thinking that they could fight off this monstrous storm. It’s crazy to think that humans can control nature. I like the back story, too. Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot largely used this event to create our public land legacy. Do you believe this particular event was related to the creation of the conservation movement in the United States? These political figures made the folks who fought that fire into heroes who died for public land. The fire was intriguing because of the elemental battle. Never before had we seen a fire of this scope. As a writer I was drawn to the inherent drama of nature rearing up like that. Look at the legacy. To this day people revere the park service and the forest service. Even in an age of government hating they respect these agencies and that largely goes back to the efforts of fighting this fire. Your book “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher” is about Edward Curtis, the charismatic photographer who spent three decades capturing the lives and culture of Native Americans on film. What inspired you to write about Curtis and this particular topic? I’ve written so much about the land that I thought it was time to write about the original inhabitants of the land. What better way to do it than through an incredible artist? He achieved a photographic odyssey which had never been done. The photographs are stunningly beautiful. It’s also a tragic story because like a lot of artists he loses everything. I don’t want to spoil the end of the story for you, but this is a classic story about an artist who is not appreciated in his time. He was actually ahead of his time in realizing we are erasing the original folks in our midst. He wanted to capture them before they disappear. I like the artistic journey part of the story. What he was capturing was essentially illegal. It was a crime for Native Americans to re-enact rituals they had done for years and years. They didn’t gain religious freedom until the mid 20th century. He was an accomplice to a crime, the crime of a people and their right to worship the god of their choice. Your books are predominantly about historical people and events. Are you a history buff and if so, have you always been one? It’s almost accidental that I became so interested in telling histories. All from the early 20th century I believe. I love to tell stories. It’s in the Irish DNA I think. My dad always told me that storytelling is one of the great hereditary traits of the Irish. I don’t consider myself a formal historian. I’m a writer and a storyteller. I’ll take the story wherever it goes. When you’re not writing, what kinds of books do you like to read and do you have any favorite authors? I just read a fantastic book of fiction called the “Art of Fielding.” It’s a novel about baseball and friendship. It blew me away. You know the feeling you get when you read a great book of fiction for the first time? On the nonfiction side, I really like Eric Larson. I like historical books that put you close to the action so you feel like you’re really there. I will read anything that draws me in. It has to be well written and alive. I’m not quite as good as my mother who consumed three books a week, but I do read at least a book a week.